What began as a lecture by a foreign dignitary interrupted by 11 students last Monday, Feb. 8 eventually erupted into a storm of backlash critiquing the students who interrupted Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, the presence of Oren on campus and the campus policies that were not designed to prevent such outbursts. Beyond the religio-political conflicts inherent in these complaints is the real question: Should this sort of speech/response be encouraged on the UC Irvine campus?

Barely six minutes into Oren’s presentation, a student stood up and, reading off a cue card according to witnesses, yelled out, “MR. OREN! MASS MURDER IS NOT FREE SPEECH!”

The student was promptly escorted outside the lecture hall by UCIPD officers without incident. After two further interruptions, Oren left the stage and Mark Petracca, chair and associate professor of political science, assumed the microphone as moderator and criticized the students involved for not showing Oren the respect due for a guest of the University. Chancellor Michael Drake followed Petracca and pleaded with the rowdy members of the audience to represent the UCI campus with respect.

Oren reassumed the stage and, despite seven further interruptions and a mass-walkout by students surrounding the interrupters, completed his half-hour lecture. Unfortunately, Oren did not stay for the originally planned half-hour of public question and answer.

The immediate response was mixed.

Third-year psychology and social behavior major and exchange student, Dalia Azizollahoff, felt the interrupters’ points could have been more articulated had they waited for the question and answer section of the lecture.

“I want to know what they were feeling and thinking … I want to learn their opinions and what they have to say,” Azizollahoff said, but added that the effect of the interruptions were shocking.

“Personally, as a Jew, I feel scared and threatened. I’m new to campus and didn’t expect anti-Semitism in Southern California,” Azizollahoff said. “I didn’t expect it to be so hateful and so determined.”

“I was disappointed to see what happened,” fifth-year political science major and former President of Anteaters for Israel, Isaac Yerushalmi said. “One of the great things about coming to UCI [is that] we can sit down at the same table to talk.”

Other immediate reactions were more concerned about the interrupters’ right to free speech at a campus event.

“I wish the hecklers were given a better stage to speak,” fourth-year biological sciences major Aayah Fatayerji said. “I wish there was a stage for both perspectives to be shared equally with equal support from Admin.”

Fatayerji stated that it was the responsibility of the University to have unbiased sponsorship due to the event’s support by the Law and Political Science departments.

Fatayerji criticized other audience members’ responses to the interrupters, including “Go back to the West Bank” and “Go back to Bahrain.”

Second-year political science major Zach Tune expressed his desire for equal reprimands from Admin for the reprisal the interrupters received from the crowd.

Chancellor Drake issued a statement on his Web site the day after on Feb. 9 condemning the interruptions as blockading free speech on campus.

“This behavior is intolerable. Freedom of speech is among the most fundamental, and among the most cherished of the bedrock values our nation is built upon. A great university depends on the free exchange of ideas. This is non-negotiable. Those who attempt to suppress the rights of others violate core principles that are the foundation of any learning community. We cannot and do not allow such behavior,” the statement said.

Moran Cohen, fourth-year business economics major and current president of Anteaters for Israel considered the event a success despite the interruptions.

“I’m not happy that there were disruptions [that prevented] a dialogue in a civil and mature fashion. I wanted everybody to hear what [Ambassador Oren] had to say.”

Anteaters for Israel helped sponsor the event after adopting it from the Political Science department on campus, who were originally contacted by the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles to host Ambassador Oren.

The Muslim Student Union at UCI issued a statement on Feb. 8 before Oren’s lecture condemning his campus visit.

“We strongly condemn the university for cosponsoring, and therefore, inadvertently supporting the ambassador of a state that is condemned by more UN Human Rights Council resolutions than all other countries in the world combined,” the statement said. It also condemned Oren’s personal involvement in Israeli-Palestinian conflicts as a member of the Israeli Defense Force earlier in his life.

The statement, combined with two of the interrupters’ ties to the Muslim Student Union – Mohamed Abdelgany is the current president and Osama Shabaik is the current vice president – provoked questions of MSU involvement in the event.

“The MSU did NOT organize the protest in response to the invitation of the Israeli ambassador to speak at UCI, and the individuals who spoke did so acting on their own accord,” Soliman said, but added, “The MSU believes in one’s right to speak freely, whether it is the Israeli ambassador’s right to promote Israel’s propaganda on campus or individuals who respond to the Israeli ambassador and disagree with him.”

Shabaik confirmed his involvement in the protests and subsequent arrest as independent of MSU.

“The actual commonality between all the protestors was that we are all supporters of the Palestinians’ right to sovereignty, human rights, and dignity,” Shabaik said. Shabaik denied anti-Semitic intent in the protests.

“Criticism of a nation-state is very different than criticism of a religious or racial population. My protest and those of the others were targeted at Israel and its crimes against the Palestinians,” Shabaik said.

The 11 students who disrupted the event were charged with section 403 of the UCIPD penal code – disrupting a public event on the University’s property. The list of arrested students was released Tuesday afternoon. Those from UCI were Joseph Haider, Osama Shabaik, Ali Sayeed, Asaad Traina, Mohammad Quereashi, Aslam Akhtar and Hakim Kebir. The students from UCR were Shaheen Nassar, Taher Herzallam and Khalid Akari.

The case has been submitted to the Orange County district attorney, according to UCIPD Chief, Paul Henisey. Further punitive action by the Office of Student Conduct is pending their investigation, but policy allows a review if the punishment is suspension or dismissal, while a warning or probation does not allow appeal, according to Media Relations Director, Cathy Lawhon.

Tensions flared in online forums, like the comments of the OC Register’s coverage of the story, and in public radio, where UCI professors Gustavo Arrejano and William Lobdell weighed in on the issue, particularly commenting on the way it made UCI, already a hotbed of tension between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian groups, appear to the outside world.

But it was UCI School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky’s perspective that explored the most important, non-partisan implications of the disruptions: whether the students who interrupted Ambassador Oren were within First Amendment protection making their voice heard. Chemerinsky weighed in on the issue during a lecture sponsored by the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity and planned months before the Oren lecture.

Chemerinsky noted first that free speech is only preserved in areas that are public forums – on campus, these include the sidewalk, or Ring Road, or the flagpoles. But within an enclosed space, specific to University policies, the University creates time, place and manner rules for which speech is allowed. The ambassador’s lecture, located inside the Student Center, was subject to these restrictions and did not allow all protections of speech accorded by the First Amendment.

“You have the right – if you disagree with me – to go outside and perform your protest. But you don’t get the right to come in when I’m talking and shout me down. Otherwise people can always silence a speaker by heckler’s veto, and Babel results,” Chemerinsky said

Chemerinsky answered student questions that concerned the Oren lecture, which included the remark that while civil disobedience has a place in public discourse, its practitioners are still subject to punishment from breaking the law. Chemerinsky also clarified that the School of Law would sponsor any event, regardless of political position, as long as it didn’t cost the law school anything.

Comments (15)

“You have the right – if you disagree with me – to go outside and perform your protest. But you don’t get the right to come in when I’m talking and shout me down. Otherwise people can always silence a speaker by heckler’s veto, and Babel results,” Chemerinsky said.

I would consider this nonsense. Chemerinsky’s logic implies that if you’re given a stage and a microphone, your freedom of speech is to be given a higher priority than everyone else’s. “Hecklers” who shout in opposition to a speaker are themselves exercising free speech.

There are at least three relevant issues that need to be discussed with regard to the interruption of the Israeli Ambassador by Muslim students from UCI and UC Riverside.

1. What is freedom of speech and was it violated? – The Ambassador was invited to speak by the UCI Political Science Department and UCI Law School. The presentation was opened up to the community with sponsorships by several groups both on and off campus. Over the years, the university has invited speakers of different political and philosophical persuasions to speak on campus. It has been the policy of the university to set aside a period with all such presentations for questions and answers so that students can create a dialogue and hear different points of view. At this forum, students from one particular persuasion set out on a coordinated plan to prevent others from hearing what the Ambassador had to say. In addition to interrupting his speech, they walked out prior to the planned questions and answer session, clearly indicating that they did not want to engage in an exchange of ideas. These actions are an affront to the purpose of a university and according to several decisions by the US Supreme Court are not protected speech under the 1st amendment.

2. Is the university administration at fault for encouraging this type of behavior on campus? While the university administration made an impressive show of stating up front that they would not tolerate a disruption of the presentation, they clearly had no plan to prevent it. To think that a group of students could out plan and outwit an administration intent on maintaining decorum in a public meeting is truly ludicrous. This is not the first time that Muslim students have disrupted presentations on the campus. Nor will it be the last as long as they have no fear that there will be any significant consequences for their actions. One has to wonder what the administration’s actions have been when students disagree with the content of classroom information. Perhaps that is because the university has already told all professors to be politically correct and make no statements that will offend their Muslim constituency.

3. Does anyone in the Muslim community really care about the facts? While there certainly are legitimate issues regarding the treatment of Palestinians, the major abuser has been fellow Arabs. More Palestinians have been killed by fellow Palestinians than by Israelis. More money has been stolen by fellow Palestinians than all the money withheld by the Israelis. It was the Jordanians and Lebanese who kicked the Palestinians out of their country. It was the Jordanians who revoked their citizenship because of fear of demographics. It was the Egyptians who refused to allow Palestinians into their country when the tunnels were closed. Most of all it has been the surrounding Arab states who have failed to provide financial support to the Palestinians. So where is the outrage? Where are the protests? Could it be that all the claims about Israeli abuses are just a smokescreen for a deep seated hatred for the only democracy in the Middle East?

JD, you are incorrect. Oren was not able to complete the question and answer period that was planned. The students prevented people who behaved civily the chance to question Oren and hear his replies..

I did apprecite JD comapring the students with a crying baby. The students did act like little children throwing a fit. But they planned it. They acted like 4th graders who do a planned book drop in class. The students are the ones who are trying to prevent an opinon contrary to theirs to be heard. Has the university ever prevented any of the extremist view from the speakers that the MSU has invited on campus?

I am disapointed with the coverage of the New University on this lecture. It appears the students were successful in one respect. I did not see an article on what the guest speaker actually said that got the students so emotional that they couldn’t control themselves.

“…Always placed in Superior Prominence to that of other nationality flags… ”

Err… actually that part is wrong.

“(g) When flags of two or more nations are displayed, they are to be flown from separate staffs of the same height. The flags should be of approximately equal size. International usage forbids the display of the flag of one nation above that of another nation in time of peace. ”
-http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/4/7.html

While I’m not a student of UC Irvine, I did find it rather unsettling that these comments were made during the speech. The comments could and should have been reserved for the question and answer session. What I found to be most appalling was the total lack of knowledge and disrespect for the American Flag.The school and those who organised this shindig were clearly in violation of United States Title code 4 chapter 1 section 7 paragraphs D & K.

In the future as to not offend just remember that the American Flag when placed on a stage is always to the ” Right” of the speaker and Always placed in Superior Prominence to that of other nationality flags, and when placed on a stage the flags are NOT to be crossed, the crossing of the flags is only to be done when placed against a wall.

Re: Gigi “these students are not anti-Semitic… Just because someone criticizes Israel or is for Palestinian human rights, does NOT mean they are anti-Semitic!”

You are correct that it is possible to criticize Israel without being anti-Semitic. But from that it seems that you illogically conclude that one should assume that someone who claims to be a critic of Israel is not anti-Semitic! (an absurd proposition considering that there are many people who are both). Or, at least you imply that these students should be given the benefit of the doubt (since you state with confidence that “these students are non anti-Semitic.” The reason then why they might not be given benefit of the doubt (and therefore the reason why one might be well justified in asserting that the MSU as an organization and their leaders are anti-Semitic even after understanding that the two don’t have to come together) is that most of the speakers that the organization has brought to this campus for the past ten years have displayed indisputable hard-core anti-Semitism. In addition, it become clear when one realizes that for the most part Muslim opponents of Israel worldwide do not oppose Israel for “human rights violations” – that argument is merely the tactic that is propagated within the discourse of the Western world, while they don’t care about actual human rights violations in the Muslim world that are instigated in the name of theocracy. Within the value system of the 21st-century West arguments about imperialism and colonialism are used to try to relate the issue to others in history, but if this conflict were occurring hundreds of years ago, it would conceptualized not as a fight against imperialism but purely as a religious war, and that is how the vast majority of Muslim opponents of Israel do indeed understand it.

Also, I am surprised you mentioned that Jews are “People of the Book,” in Islam implying that Jews therefore have a positive place in Islam, without explaining what the term means within the original context of Islamic texts. To be a “People of the Book” means that you were a people that in antiquity was given a divine revelation and accompanying scripture, but that after that you physically distorted the text and meaning of your scripture. In addition, when Muhammad came to correct you from your error, you rejected and opposed him, therefore doubly securing your place as an enemy of divine truth. Once the Muslim world has conquered you, you are allowed to live and practice your religion as long as you live by a set of oppressive rules that symbolize your inferiority to Muslims. And even so, according to most authorities you (the member of a “People of the Book” would still go to hell after you died. So as you can see, the connotation of the “People of the Book” as it has been understood in the Muslim world from the 700s until today is in fact extremely negative, hardly something that would prove that Muslims are by definition not anti-Semitic.

While the ambassador was interrupted, it is important to note that he indeed finished his speech and that he even expressed a wish that the protestors remain to speak with him as the protestors left in unison. Someone who was silenced against their will would not have been able to adequately conclude their speech and later on wish that their “silencers” stayed. With regard to the “heckler’s veto” that the UCI Law School Dean keeps citing, yelling fire in movie theatre is punishable because there is a possibility that people will get trampled unnecessarily as they rush to escape (among other types of disorder and negative consequences); however, no one was ever put in a harmful situation during Oren’s speech: the protestors simply were an unwelcome distraction. A baby throwing a temper tantrum would have involved similar interruptions. Saying otherwise underscores a need to advance a certain agenda, by setting a certain precedent in order to silence other lawful examples of free speech. There is plausible and ample evidence to show that this protest is indeed covered by the first amendment. Also, this controversial and polarized topic involves emotionally-charged opinions, as people have been wrongfully dying on both sides of the fence. An attempt to shun the emotions that underly their protest is an ignorance for the human condition. While their behavior did not have a malicious intent, it did indicate a desire to be heard accordingly.

Perhaps the actions of the MSU would be beter understood if more people appreciated the horrific conditions that Gazans live under. It is hardly surprising that the public are so misinformed, given that only three members of the U.S. government have visited Gaza since 2007. The most recent, Rep. Baird was understandably appalled:http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/02/19/gaza.baird/

Labeling criticisms of the actions of the government of Israel as “anti-semitic” simultaneously elevates it beyond criticism, something dangerous for the government of any country, and belittles real anti-semitism. No one should equate the criticism of a powerful military and government, with the persecution of a an ethnic group.

Meh. This is MSU we’re talking about. If there’s one thing that MSU proved in the 4 years that I went to UCI was that their leadership is no better than a spoiled child year old throwing a hissy fit and their membership are sheeple too ignorant to the stupidity of their leadership to actually stand up. On a large, international internet forum for students, a poster asked, (paraphrased since it’s 2-3 posts in the conversation) ‘If they wanted a platform to speak, isn’t that what the Q&A session for?” The only reply I could think of was, “Trick question. MSU can’t be respectful long enough to another group’s guest speaker to actually make it to the Q&A session.”

MSU, grow up. You’re a disservice to UCI and all past, present, and future Anteaters.

It is amazing to me how severely limited our student body’s knowledge is regarding constitutional law. I, unlike Ali, don’t blame it on the administration. Our culture preaches that knowledge is power, but unfortunately those with limited knowledge usually feel as if they are the most powerful.

“Personally, as a Jew, I feel scared and threatened. I’m new to campus and didn’t expect anti-Semitism in Southern California,” Azizollahoff said. “I didn’t expect it to be so hateful and so determined.”

I’d just like to say that she is confused; these students are not anti-Semitic, but rather criticize Israel’s governing policies and treatment of the Palestinians. Just because someone criticizes Israel or is for Palestinian human rights, does NOT mean they are anti-Semitic! In fact, Muslims call Jews and Christians “people of the book.”

There are so many problems at UC/Irvine it’s hard to add them all up, but one problem that is obvious is there is a history of zero accountability for students who behave like angry school children.

The Administration is essentially an accomplice with the students by quietly acquiescing when the students act like threatening thugs. And let there be no doubt about it, this is how the students behave. This is, of course, what the Administration has always done for why else would the student feel free to behave as they did. It is not as if UC/Irvine is not well known as a “University” where students can behave despicably without paying any price.

Unless the Administration takes strong action –and that means more than simply revoking someone’s position in a particular organization, because that position will simply be refilled by a different student—and by strong action I mean suspensions then this despicable behavior by UC/Irvine students will only continue and will only get worse. I suppose this obvious fact will not dawn on UC/Irvine’s Administrators until some Jewish kid is maliciously beaten, and even then I’d guess this Administration will rationalize such an act as something unconnected to the atmosphere they, the Administrators , have been integral in creating.

It is as much the Administration’s fault as the students. In my opinion not only should the Administration change its policies toward belligerent students, but there should also be some significant changes within the Administration for allowing an atmosphere where students feel like they can behave like thugs without fearing they will pay a price for their behavior. It is time for change at UC/Irvine and the change should start from the top.